


How Deep The Bullet Lies

by TheRangress (orphan_account)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3107147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheRangress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa Hallett won't let an army of ghosts stand between her and Ianto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Deep The Bullet Lies

As for the scream, it goes unnoticed.

There’s a little cubbyhole above the door. It shouldn’t be there, but if you looked close enough you could’ve seen dangling bootlaces.

Lisa Hallett’s head was trying to stab its way off her neck, one arm tingling against her ribs. The other couldn’t possibly still be attached. She felt very like a doll that had spent one too many moves in a box. And did she even still have the right number of legs?

Beneath, she could still hear the rhythmic stamp of metal feet.

“Oi!”

That girl, the xenobiologist who Ianto praised for her organized notes, who wore ridiculous shoes and always showed up out of the blue with coffee for everyone. Her name wasn’t Dakota, but what it was—

“You are not compatible.”

“Yeah, that’s what my mother-in-law said.”

Gunshots, an electrical crackle, and a final thud.

“This section is empty,” says one ghost.

“We move on.” Maybe it was a different one, maybe the same. They were all the same, after all.

Wait until she can’t feel a sickening heartbeat in her throat, wait until her breathing doesn’t threaten the edges of her vision. Then, breathe slowly. In and out. Wait three breaths.

She skids out, and falls to the floor in a crouch. Her eyes take time to adjust, that girl (she can’t be older than Ianto, don’t imagine Ianto like that) still a contortion and wide-eyed.

She’s too aware of blood in her ears and bile in her throat, not of her environment. Slowly, she goes inside her mind and expands.

Just at the edges, there is pain and a blankness she can’t read. Nothing to tell her which way to go. Just that she should be safe here.

Lisa spares a moment to stretch, so her aches and numbness don’t make her collapse when she needs to run. And then, she closes the eyes of somebody who isn’t Dakota.

“I’ll find out who you were,” she promises.

When you’ve made a promise, you can’t die.

She pauses.

“Me and Ianto.”

She’s looked in the Archives already, and if he’d come for her she’d have seen. She’ll head outside. It’s a tossup whether she’ll kiss him or smack him into next week at this point, but she’s running down the hall with her entire mind on her basic psychic training. Shield up, but reach out. She’s a prickling you can’t place, the hair on the back of your neck raising, a feeling that perhaps… but no, it’s nothing.

Well. That’s how it should work.

It’s the ghosts, mostly, and even when she’s close enough she should be able to see every surface thought… They’re minds, not machines, but they’re so…

The other minds aren’t much better, filling her with their own pain. She has to find him. She has to find _him._

Lisa isn’t brave enough, or strong enough, or _kind_ enough to save anyone else. Just the boy she’s made promises and promises to. And when they’re safe she’ll promise him again, she’ll promise and promise until they can never die.

_Lisa_ is screaming through her mind, and it’s tearing her apart the pain, and she needs Lisa Lisa _Lisa_ , but—

Lisa tears her mind away. She is Lisa. She _is_ Lisa.

And she’s standing in the middle of a hallway when she needs to run.

Some god or force of luck saves her, because every single ghost is falling away in front of her, tossed through the hallway by some invisible tennis game.

* * *

 

She finds him.

There’s metal and blood, and she thinks a corpse. Everything collapses, and his thoughts are her thoughts are his thoughts are _them._

**Convert her. Convert her. She will become like us.**

**They will all be like us.**

But Lisa’s here and she’ll save everyone, she’ll save him and he’ll never leave her and it’s ok. Lisa’s here.

And Ianto’s face has been torn apart and he’s metal melted to bone and she _promises_ oh god does she promise.

They aren’t sure where the pain at seeing and the pain at being start to fade into each other, where _Lisa_ meets _Ianto_ and become like us become like us **become like us**.

She pulls away, grabbing at every guard she has and abandoning him. And oh. Just looking at him hurts even more. Because they’d had their promises. His… faith.

“Lisa.”

There are bloody handprints left down her arm and she feels metal, metal, metal.

“Can’t you hear it?” she whispers.

“Yes,” and he breaks.

He’d held it together, because that was what he did. She makes promises, and he believes. They make it through.

Oh, they’re perfect for each other. But she can still feel a prickle of metal in the back of her mind, and when he holds her too tight and chokes out they’ll make it, they’ll _be together…_

She sucks in a breath, grabs his hands, and touches his mind. Pain, yes, and she takes it in and she wraps him up in lies.

Then she pushes beneath the pain. Beneath the thoughts of her. And there’s only metal. She can feel it gaining, and there had been so, so much of him.

“Ianto,” she says, voice wavering, hands wavering. Her eyes dart around, and yes. There it is. “I’m going to have to break a promise.”

“But you— ”

She pulls one hand away and takes it in her hand, comforted by the weight of it. “I know. But you’re one of _them_ now.”

“But I love you.” He’s pulling away, he knows what she’s doing, and she broke his heart. “I love you, Lisa.”

“For how long?”

She blinks away the fog in her eyes and aims for the chestpiece. No armor on him yet.

Something in his eyes fades.

“I love you,” she says, and shoots once.

 


End file.
